Over her, the last crack of light went out as a stout hatch was closed. She was held in the tiny hold of the cruiser, caught as securely as any prisoner behind bars in a penitentiary.
Carlisle’s demand for her to bring a chemical to Benson had been just natural enough for her to be caught off guard. And it looked as if she were going to pay bitterly for that.
CHAPTER VII
Death — Odds-On Favorite!
Fergus MacMurdie had a most peculiar trait. When everything was going smoothly, it was his dour Scotch nature to predict the most dreadful things that were sure to happen any minute. Always he looked on the gloomy side of life.
But when an emergency arose in which these seemed no conceivable way out, he grew almost cheerful, and predicted sure success.
On the work train, Smitty’s gigantic muscles were writhing and straining against his bonds as he stared out the window. Free, and with a good purchase for back and arms and shoulders, he might possibly have broken the rope. But in his cramped position a solid inch of good new hemp was a good deal too much, even for him.
“We’re sunk,” he said, looking out the window at the scenery flashing past. “Those guys said we’d hit seventy. My guess is we’re topping even that speed. And when we hit that sharp curve—”
“Whoosh, mon,” said Mac, straining at his own ropes, “we’ll come out of this. We’ve come out of worse.”
“You’re nothing but a disgusting Pollyanna,” snapped Smitty.
“And ye’re just an overgrown schoolboy who gives up at the first lick of teacher’s ruler on the back of yer hand,” burred Mac.
“Oh, I am, am I!” In his indignation, Smitty almost broke free.
Behind them the overstrained switch engine roared like a tortured bull, with its drive wheels turning so fast they were mere blurs. And Smitty thought of something else. Something adding no cheer whatever to the scene.
“Those two flatcars loaded with rails!” he said suddenly.
“What about ’em?” said Mac.
“When we go off the track, the car we’re in will bury itself and stop — but the rails on those flatcars won’t! They’ll break their chains and keep right on sliding forward. Two carloads of steel rails. They’ll spill all the way through this old wooden day coach like a couple of hundred half-ton lances.”
Smitty began fighting his bonds with renewed fury. And then Benson’s quiet voice sounded over the uproar of the speeding work train.
“Mac, are your legs free?”
“Yes, they’re free.”
“Then,” said Benson, “put your feet against the back of my seat, if you can, and push me as far forward toward Smitty’s seat as you’re able.”
They were seated in line, first Smitty, then Benson, then MacMurdie. The gang had bound them to the backs of the three seats, but hadn’t bothered with their legs. Why should they? A man can’t untie himself with his feet.
But the gang had neglected to search the three from the knees down, as well as up, for weapons. Which proved that they were quite unfamiliar with at least one of The Avenger’s armament habits.
Benson habitually wore, in a slim holster strapped to his right calf, the small, special, silenced .22 pistol which he called, with grim affection, Mike. Strapped to the other calf was a needle-like throwing knife with a light, hollow tube for a handle, which was designated Ike.
Now, the man with the white, dead face and the death pools of eyes had managed to draw his left leg up enough to get the handle of razor-sharp Ike in his fingers.
Benson couldn’t cut himself free — he hadn’t that much leeway of motion. But he could cut the giant Smitty loose if he could lean forward enough to reach the ropes where they wound around the back of Smitty’s seat.
And the seats of the day coach were standard, in that they could be tilted forward to reverse the seating arrangement when the end of a run had been reached.
Mac put his huge feet against the back of Benson’s seat and shoved. Benson and seat back and ropes all shifted forward. Ike’s sharp edge almost touched Smitty’s lashings.
“More,” said Benson.
The Scot shoved harder. Benson drew his lithe body in on itself at the waist, and the knife touched.
The blade had bitten only half through the key loop when Smitty’s giant muscles suddenly completed the task by snapping the rest. He burst free and stood up.
A powerful thrust freed Benson, and another did for MacMurdie. Then the three stared out the front door of the car in the direction in which they were speeding, and Smitty’s great hands clenched.
The work train was almost on the curve the gang leader had mockingly mentioned.
The roadbed hugged the lake shore here as it did in most of its length. The water was about twenty feet down, over a sand bluff which formed a natural breakwater to keep the track from being washed out during storms.
A little ahead, the track curved sharp right, to follow a similar curve of the beach. And the work train, roaring over the rails, could not possibly make that turn. It would plow straight ahead, over the twenty-foot drop and into the. lake.
“Whoosh!” cried Mac. “We’ll have to jump—”
But a leap from the train at that great speed would be as deadly as staying on it and being plunged on and on into the lake.
They couldn’t jump off and they couldn’t stay on.
It is the main characteristic of great leaders that in times of catastrophe, other men, who might be brilliant and capable themselves, look to them for direction.
Mac and Smitty looked at their ice-eyed chief that way now. And without faltering Benson answered. His face, unable to change expression even at such a time of crisis as this, was a fearful, dead mask. His eyes were like cold gray flames. But his voice was quite calm.
“Top of the car. Fast! At the last moment, jump to the side as far as possible.”
Mac and Smitty leaped to obey even though, for a few seconds, the meaning behind the strategy didn’t become clear to them. At the open door of the speeding car, Smitty caught Mac by the thighs and lifted him straight up till the Scot could grasp the shank of the old hand-brake wheel atop the car. The shrieking rush of air caused by the train’s speed helped hold Mac in place.
Smitty tossed Benson up the same way, then swarmed up himself like a great gorilla. For just an instant his eyes rested speculatively on the hand brake, but he knew the thing had no meaning here. He could twist it clear off, and the speed of the train wouldn’t be slowed enough, in the short distance left to the curve, even to notice.
“Here we go!” his great voice loomed.
The roar of the locomotive behind them had risen to a steady shriek. The flatcars loaded with rails were doing a kind of devil’s dance along the track, seeming almost to leave it at times, such was the pace.
They had almost reached the sharp curve ahead!
Benson was crouching on the sloping left side of the car roof, the lake side. Smitty and Mac had taken similar positions, several yards apart.
They swayed there on the balls of their feet, on the lake side of the jerking car. Benson hadn’t had to simplify his orders any more. Their quick brains had understood when they were on the car top.
The old day coach hit the beginning of the curve. With its first awful lurch, Benson and Smitty and Mac jumped.
Like three stones shot from a sling, their three bodies whirled out, away from the track, over the twenty-foot drop, a dozen feet out into the lake. The terrible snap of the car at the curve, plus their own impetus, had catapulted them an unbelievable distance.
They hit — not hard earth as they would have struck had they leaped before — but waist-deep water. Hitting even this, with such force, was a little like being rolled over granite paving blocks. But at least it wasn’t sure death.